1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to on-line network communication systems and, more particularly, to a system for locating information in an on-line network.
2. Background
Commercial, interactive on-line networks are rapidly expanding in size. Consequently, a large number of end-users often spend a significant amount of time locating desired services, data files, and other information in such on-line networks. With the expansion of on-line networks and the increasing amounts of information content provided in such networks, users need a simple, efficient and quick mechanism for finding desired offerings.
In general, conventional on-line networks attempt to provide "find programs" which help reduce the amount of time a user spends looking for information. Typically, such find programs index the content of an on-line network to create a search index. The search index is a table which associates a list of words with the location of the words in the on-line network.
To locate an offering, an end-user enters search terms into the find program. The search terms typically relate to the name or topic associated with a desired offering. In response, the find program searches its search index to locate the offerings identified by the search terms. The find programs then display the list of located offerings.
While such find programs improve the process of locating offerings, they suffer from a number of disadvantages. For example, as the number of offering in the on-line network grow, the size of the indexes also grow. Creating, updating and searching large indexes tax the processing resources of the on-line network. In addition, as the number of users increase, the number of search requests also increase, further taxing the processing resources of the on-line network. As a result, response times degrade resulting in higher telecommunication costs and user frustration.
In addition, users of on-line networks currently desire a wide variety of information content. Consequently, a single entity cannot economically provide all the content offered in an on-line network. Thus, many on-line network providers have attempted to supplement the content of their on-line networks by providing access to external databases. For example, many on-line networks also provide access to external databases existing in the Internet. Accordingly, on-line network providers need a find system which allows users to not only locate information within the commercial on-line network, but also locate offerings associated with external sources of information.
Still further, the wide variety of offerings in conventional on-line networks complicates the process of creating and updating search indexes. For example, some services, such as interactive games, contain only small amounts of textual data, while other services, such as on-line newspapers, contain large amounts of textual data and images. Consequently, a single indexing scheme cannot optimally index the wide variety of offerings available in current on-line networks. Accordingly, on-line network providers need a cost-effective, flexible and extensible system which can create different search indexes.